HWL Ebsworth is closely monitoring the advice provided by the Commonwealth Government in relation to the best approach to COVID-19, and we are doing everything within our power to minimise the risk of our service to our clients being disrupted.
Our Business Continuity Plan includes staff working remotely from the office, as required, and we are in the fortunate position to have team members with relevant skills based in each of our offices located in every State and Territory of Australia.
HWL Ebsworth’s IT system can be accessed by all team members remotely in an identical way to our internal access. To ensure that our clients are not impacted by illness to key individuals, we ensure that all file related information is stored on our centralised file management system. This will enable another team member to quickly come up to speed on the current status of client matters.
At this stage we have not seen a material increase in staff absenteeism, however the breadth of our national resourcing and a proactive approach to our staff working remotely will minimise the risk to our clients.
We have also been interacting with our external suppliers to ensure that their business continuity plans are appropriate. We will continue to monitor their service delivery, and in the event that their businesses are materially impacted, we have alternate suppliers ready to take on those roles.
HWL Ebsworth’s Management Team is monitoring the situation continually, and the firm is in a position to implement our Business Continuity Plan at any time. Our existing Business Continuity Plan covers a scenario such as COVID-19, and we are confident that there will be no disruption to our service delivery to any of our clients.